What the preacher said

On the way home from my fishing trip on a Sunday morning in May I was listening to a radio preacher. He’d been talking to a fellow who had trouble believing in God.

The man told the preacher he didn’t understand the idea of a Supreme Being, and when he didn’t understand an idea he refused to accept it.

The preacher responded that he didn’t understand God either. But then he said, “I don’t understand how a black cow can eat green grass and make white milk and yellow butter. But I still drink milk and eat butter.”

I like that analogy, even though I’m not sure it would convert any atheists. Not that I’m trying here to convert anybody to anything. To me religion is as personal as underwear and your own private concern. Only reason I mention the preacher is that he set me thinking about all the things I accept that I don’t understand.

If I had to understand everything that goes on around me I’d be up the creek without a paddle.

Here I sit in the middle of Texas, surrounded by woods and bird song, typing sentences onto a keyboard, and in a few minutes a soldier in Iraq can be reading what I write. You think I really understand how that comes about? I do not. I just accept it.

I don’t really understand entirely why the engine on my pickup starts when I turn the ignition key, or how it can keep running so smoothly for many thousands of miles. You ever think about all the dozens of separate parts that have to function correctly to make a vehicle run? Just one goes on the fritz, and you roll to a stop.

Like most people I know a little about an internal combustion engine and how it transmits its power to wheels. But the present conglomeration of vehicles on the highways is so varied and complex it defies understanding. If my pickup quit running — and it’s one of the simplest vehicles on four wheels — I wouldn’t even raise the hood. I’d just open my cell phone and call for a tow truck.

See this bean? A pinto bean, left over from the last time I used this table to sort through a mess of pintos, looking for rocks. When it comes to something I accept but don’t understand, this bean makes a great exhibit. I can get a handful of dirt and put it in a cup and bury this bean in there, and set it out in the sun, and water it, and the bean will sprout, and make a plant.

The smartest agronomist on the planet can tell me the conditions that must exist to make this bean sprout. But they can’t tell me WHY it sprouts. They just accept that it does.

61 Responses

The thing I mostly can’t understand is why I’m so bent on doing everything my Mother wants. She calls, I do. Period. Considering I’m 10 years past the half century mark and in much worse health than she. Guess it’s the Biblical thing.

What I don’t understand is how we can get tv from satellites in space, how we can send email to friends on the other side of the world and how we can listen to thousands of songs on a contraption that is smaller than a cigarette pack, and yet my previous cell phone provider would not let me make a call to my home………from my driveway.

Cool. Metaphysics. I love it. I can change spark plugs, but I don’t understand electricity any better than Papa Ben. Another thing I don’t understand is why everybody in Texas eats dried pinto beans, There are warehouses full of dried pintos when fresh shelled ones are 1000% better. God only knows, I guess.

It’s mostly magic. I do find it amusing that there are folks egocentric enough to believe that the creator of the universe cares about them in a personal way and reguires their praise in order to feel good about himself.

I agree with you. A person could spend the rest of his / her life trying to understand and that just isn’t my cup of tea. My feelings are too just sit back , enjoy what we have here on earth and which the river flow.

Leon – It’s called science and evolution. Very few gaps left in knowledge. Religion loves to attack the gaps while expecting you to accept that an invisible fatherless child who lives in the sky is the creator of all. He loves you and you must accept him or burn in hell forever

Of course Muslims have their own version and Christians are infidels.

The comical part of all this is that if the irrational christians were raised in a Muslim country by muslim parents, they also would consider christians infidels.

These incompatible religions are leading the world to destruction. So sad.

I have become a secular humanist, hoping that reason and rationality can prevent our destruction.

Sorry to be so gloomy. I am a happy 71 year old going spearfishing tomorrow. I just worry about my grand kids.

Isn’t it great that we don’t understand everything. I’ve always been afraid that some day scientist might be able to explain the Marfa Lights. Wouldn’t that be a sad day? Think of chemical elements – Not too long ago, it was said that the molecule was the smallest particle – Then it was the atom – Then it was the electron, proton and neutrons -Then quarks. The answer won’t end there either. Scientist thought they had the answer to the universe many many times only to stumble across something else such as black holes & dark energy. I think this is fantastic. My mother told her kids that reading was like magic. She explained how the letters could be arranged in an infinite variety of words. All four of her children were early readers and are readers to this day. I believe every person likes to learn, even if only within the confines of a narrow area of interest. My late father once said that when he no longer wanted to learn something new every day it would be time to “slap me in the face with the burial spade”. That is just about the way things turned out for Dad. If we knew all the answers, we wouldn’t enjoy this blog or Mr. Hale’s column.

The older we get, the more pondering time allows for. And as an optimist, acceptance is more my bent.

Although there are still plenty of things that irritate me, as in things I can’t change all by myself, I generally feel that God must have a hand in all this wonder around us, even though much of it is man made.

I don’t have a problem understanding how cows giving milk or why people eat dried pinto beans. What I have trouble with is getting my mind around the length of time it takes a glacier to grind a river valley down to something like Yosemite Valley. I also have trouble coming to grips with how far away the sun is. I know th answer is 93 million miles. I just don’t seem to grasp their size like I understand the length of a foot or a yard or a day or a month.

That preacher was right. How can anyone not believe in God? When I see a speckled trout splashing at the end of my hook, the beauty of the Grand Canyon, seeds sprouting in my garden, the giant oak outside my bathroom window, bamboo shoots growing 3 inches in one day, I know God created this.

Can God take a personal interest in each of our lives? I’m sure that he is capable of this too.

I don’t understand God. If God had consulted me I would have let Moses go to the promised land.

Dianne, I thank God for those pinto beans also. I’m having mine with fried potatoes. This is a most satisfying meal.

Another thing I don’t understand is how the front brake pads on my Toyota can still be good after 91,000 miles and how could the fuel pump(a very small electric motor) cost 600 dollars just for the part.

Did you receive the Ipod for your birthday that was mentioned in an earlier blog? If so, you must REALLY be wondering how “things work”! At age 72, I just received an Ipod for Mother’s Day, and am enjoying it so much………… but as to how everything works as far as “ripping” songs from previously owned CD’s, to storing them in Itunes, then transferring them to my Ipod, it’s a continuing mystery! And to top it all off, in addition to hearing your chosen lists through the ear pods,there’s a “sled” that you slip the Ipod into, tune any FM radio, at home or in a vehicle, to a certain station, and listen to your songs over the radio this way. This is certainly a miracle of some kind! Our daughter refers to me as a “technobabe”. Kind of flattering at my age!

Wow…sounds like that preacher stirred up a mess of trouble. Just kidding. (haha)

It’s always fascinated me how things tend to work, but I see your point how we tend to just “accept” as well. Perhaps, it’s for the best, as information can overwhelm if fed too much or too quickly. *shrugs* This topic also reminds me of the How stuff works web site.

OK, I’ll just go ahead and say it. Nobody else will. We all to some degree are able to understand God, nature, space science, medical marvels, electronics, and such. But the one thing in this universe that NOBODY understands is women. Not saying that’s a bad thing, mind you, it just is.

Shirley, yes, I did get the iPod for my birthday and it’s just great. True, I have trouble operating it sometimes but my partner, who’s tuned into all this tech stuff, loads the music for me and she gives lessons free of charge.

I have a lot of Willie and Merle on that thing, and I have Beethoven’s 9th Symp. which I never tire of and Rhapsody in Blue and some other Gershwin. Also I bought a stack of Karen Carpenter, almost everything she ever recorded. I still think her voice is the most melodic, most pleasing to the ear, of any singer I’ve ever heard.

Main trouble I have with the iPod is keeping the little earpieces from falling out. Evidently my ears are not built like everybody else’s because those things sure don’t fit me. LH>

I puzzle over many things: How does a heat pump know when to pump heat and when to pump cold? The OTC medicinal preparations that stop both diarrhea and constipation…How do they know which to do? What if they get confused and get it backwards?

At the mall, you see the signs that say “You are here.” How do they know that? If you go to another place, they know that too.

Lastly, why do we drive on the parkway and park on the driveway?

Zounds!! I have too much time on my hands, but it is too hot to go outside.

When we lost all four of our parents in one year after about 10 years of commuting to hospitals and doctors, I did a lot of questioning and wondering. Truthfully, I knew this had all been part of people’s full lives progressing to the final end bu I still was tortured.

The situation may have logically required therapy but I have always felt (Forgive me if any of you are psychologists.) that the folks I’ve met or heard of are a lot nuttier than I’ve ever been. I turned to keeping very busy, and if I regressed turned to the Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference between the two.

There are more verses to the poem and I believe it comes from AA but I think it does cover the bases if you think about it. I even made it up in counted cross stitch. You can drive yourself crazy questioning and worrying about things. Think about it a little but be at peace if you can’t change it. Take time to smell the roses. Blessings.

Oh, Leon-If the ear phones on your IPod aren’t permanent and just plug in, maybe you can change them out to a set that is held together with a band or strip over your head and then fit on the outside of your ear like small earphones. Good luck and enjoy!

I am not surprised to hear that there is a wineshop in Roundtop. There are more vineyards in Austin County than corn fields and there was a winery in Brenham before there was a brewery. Today there are at least two small wineries and a small brewery in Austin County. The brewery is in an old barn about halfway between New Ulm and Industry……….the beers are Ales, Porters and Stouts; not for the faint of heart or the unsophisticated palate.

I know Andre the chef from years ago. He probably wouldn’t remember me, but I used to fix his meat slicer and vacuum pack machine when we used to work at the same downtown hotel together, and he was “just” a butcher making great homemade sausages on the side. I even helped him with some work on his new place when he moved out to Burton, and he gave me saltpeter when I first tried to cure my own meat.

That was years ago, and I still work for the same company, but same as he moved from France to wherever to Houston to Burton, I’ve moved from Houston to wherever and beyond.

Such a small world, and so many people trying to make it so complicated for everybody else. That’s what I can’t figure out.

I haven’t come across anyone using “zounds” for several centuries, if one excepts the swashbucklers like Errol Flynn. Good to see that the old words never die. Perhaps you buckle your swash also in your spare time?

My dictionary says that it is an euphemism for “God’s wounds”, which raises an interesting point. How would God, as generally envisioned by various religions, become wounded?

JimH – I think of it like this. Everyone alive today will live somewhere in the range of 100 years plus or minus 100 years. The time before we were born is just a vast eternity to us. I expect the time after we die will be exactly the same. But … just because you can’t remember what happened before you were born doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. Also doesn’t mean it wasn’t bad. Might just mean there was nothing to remember.

It seems to me that the above comments alone should give us reason to believe: A daughter’s love, the amazing intricate human body, pinto beans, speckled trout, IPods. My my, what excuse do we have not bow down to such a creator. That’s pretty much what Paul said in Romans chapter 1. Read it for yourself. Like Dave, I too would have let Moses go in, but God probably wouldn’t have let me go in either.

Starting with this computer and other electronic gadgets, I realize that I understand very little about my world,which produces a constant source of amazement for me.

For example, the anasazi beans, which I mentioned earlier and which perferred over pintos by me and my wife, were discovered in a clay pot in southwest Colorado. It was estimated that they were over 800 years old. Neverthless they were planted and they flourished; now they are being grown and harvested commercially. Truly amazing.

RE “How would God, as generally envisioned by various religions, become wounded?” If I had created such a marvelous world and saw what had become of it, I would feel wounded. I would also destroy it. Again.

Challenge everything man tells you, especially if it comes from a “professional”.

“You think I really understand how that comes about? I do not. I just accept it.”

I remember growing up and watching Popeye, around the same time, mother forced me to eat spinach. My mother said “You stay at the table until you eat your spinach. I want you to grow up like Popeye. He eats his spinach because there is so muck iron in it.” They turned out the lights first and I never ate the spinach.

I was twenty years when I left for UT in Austin. The night before, mom was about to turn the light out, while I was sitting at the table “not eating spinach.”

I did a report on Standard Brands, and was browsing the trade journals. There are 90% ad and 10% information in a trade journal, but in the corner of the page, the word Spinach caught my eye. Paraphrased, the article said, “The guy that calculated the amount of iron in spinach misplaced the decimal.”

Incompetence is the innocent aspect of man that goes into an opinion hisopinion on anything, much more the nature of life and god. After a while, we cannot rely on, nor can we blame, incompetence for our spiritual void. We merely act without excuse.

Jay and Dave (and everybody else), sorry to harp on the circumstance, but if you want to put it all in perspective, go to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and pay the extra fee to visit the mummy room.

Apart from King Tut’s treasure, Ramses is there. The very same man who accompanied Moses from a babe in the rushes until he finally drove him out of Egypt and died (of fright, not drowning, the science suggests) in the Red Sea. The actual body, groomed hair and manicured fingernails and all. He’s shorter than I expected. 3500 years old. You can kneel down beside him and think he was about to wake up and look at you, then you think at how he must have lived his life.

When she was a child in the 30s and early 40s my mother’s family had a summer house down on Galveston Bay. She used to tell me about a bait shack cum ice house at Kemah that they would visit from time to time. The adults would all go “to the back” while my mother and her sister were left in the store in front along with any other children whose parents happened to be visiting. What fascinated Mother about this place was the Egyptian mummy the proprietor had standing as an attraction by the penny slot machines and other gambling machinery. I often asked her if it was a real mummy and she would say “Oh, yes, absolutely.”

Don’t know what happened to the mummy, but I sure do wish it and my mother’s Kemah were still with us.

Hi AJC. The way I understand it, the experts are pretty sure the guy in the glass case marked “Ramses II” was Ramses II because the tomb he was found in, and the sarcophagus, and the casket, had writing all over them saying something like, “This is Ramses, son of Ramses the Great”. Of course, there were several Ramses that followed, and there is a lot of debate over which Pharaoh was Moses’ bane; my tour guide seemed to think it was actually Menempetah, one of the sons of Ramses II, who chased Moses across the desert, because Ramses II was well into his 90′s when he died. As she explained it, some scholars think that a 90 year-old man probably would not have gone on a chariot race across the desert, but his ambitious 60-year old son might have. Menempetah is in the mummy room, too, (at least that what the sign on the case said) and strangely enough his skin turned white when he died, the only mummy found so far that is like this, apparently because his body soaked in salt water for a while before he was mummified.

I am neither a Muslim nor a religious scholar, so all I have to go on are discussions over tea with Islamic friends. But they tell me that Jesus is revered on the same level as Abraham and Moses, not a “minor” prophet at all. The virgin birth of Jesus is a sacred tenant of Islam, on par with God blowing life into Adam. How that worked I don’t know. Another mystery.

“The virgin birth of Jesus is a sacred tenant of Islam, on par with God blowing life into Adam. How that worked I don’t know. Another mystery.”

I posted on Blue Bayou things unknown are rightly believed or not rightly/honorably refuted because of probability.

PBS had a show on String Theory that put this thought in perspective. The premise is that everything we see and do not see is only energy, like the vibration of a string on a violin.

String Theory also says that there are eleven dimensions, and these dimensions coexist side-by-side, while man is only cognizant of three.

Probability: if you run into the side of a wall enough times, the vibration between your energy and the energy of the wall will be such that you will walk though the wall into one of the other dimensions. It might take you 2 billion tries, but eventually, you will go through the wall probably black-and-blue maybe even dead, I suppose, but nonetheless you transported into another dimension. I will caution you, I have not walked through any walls lately, but am capable of successful in walking through a plate glass window (not a spiritual moment)

Spiritual: Assume one of the dimensions is spiritual and one man out of 12 billion, became “one with the universe”, which gave him, like Pac Man gave him an energy pill, the “Key” to opening the other dimension. Only one man did it (Jesus)

Religious Implications: Enoch, Elijah, Catholic: Resurrection, transubstantiation, etc, etc. *** Garden of Eden is right in front of us in another dimension, all we have to do is pull the curtain open, but you have to find the curtain (like capturing a monkey: put a banana in a coconut and the monkey grabs it and won’t let go so the hunter captures the monkey, we hold on to thoughts and tangible items. Our thoughts blur our vision, so we cannot see and the banana will not let us open the curtain.

***We could go on and on (Oh I have)

Closing: Most humans on this board have not been around long enough to experience any of this, so challenge everything man says spiritual.

Ellen…’fraid we lost Kemah…last time, when I topped the bridge, I looked the other way and went on down to San Leon and enjoyed a relaxed Sunday dinner on the deck..y’all lets ask who ever we pray to for peace…gene

Matt Bramanti – One of my grandfathers worked as a guard for railroad survey crews in the late eighteen hundreds. The Apaches were still active at the time. He worked for the railroads again in the early nineteen hundreds when Pancho Villa was raiding. That was the last time he was in far West Texas. He saw the lights. He said many of those who saw them referred to the lights as Victorio’s ghost. That was well before Marfa or any Marfa C of C (or car headlights). I’ve sen them numerous times and each time they were different.

Leon, Do you remember the sound of a Linotype machine? Back in the sixties I worked at the Palestine Herald Press, and was amazed at the way those operaters worked. It was a unique thing to see and i guess there probably are no more of them. Did you ever know a writer by the name of Earnest “Bones” Jones, and were you a fan of Hal Boyle?

Jim, “but I always look for a pattern or a conclusion that I can draw or be told”. The conclussion is I am not god, the pattern is we are all looking for answers and patterns, and unless god is posting on this blog, we will always get answers about spirituality, but I look for the truth.

Part of getting “told” the answer is, many will follow the advise and use that as an excuse escape responsibility onsce you follow the advice.

Responsibility is a heavy burden, I am doubting I will be the one to lighten anyone’s load. I have enough on my plate.

I just discovered your blog today, and this discovery will undoubtedly be the highlight of my day!

I’m an Ex-Houstonian now living in the English (Oxfordshire) countryside with my English husband. I’ve been here about 4-1/2 years now. We come back to Houston at least once/year — and as that’s not enough to satisfy my craving for things Houston/Texan, I try to stay in touch via various online sources.

So how incredible to discover that I can continue to read your musings on the web! YIPPEE!

I wear my dad’s old suede jacket he purchased when he graduated from college in 1948. It is one sweet jacket. I also wear the Rolex watch his parents gave him for Christmas in 1945.

I like shopping the vintage clothing stores on 19th Street. The other day I purchased a sharp, razor-thin Oleg Cassini tie for $8.00.

By the way, men’s hats will be back in style very soon. Check out the hat store on Houston Avenue near North Main for the finest in men’s hats. For western wear, forget the large Stetsons. Instead, look for the “LBJ” style hat. It’s the same style you see all the Dallas detectives wearing in all the old JFK assassination news films. Only have it creased in the classic federa style, with the sides fairly flat and the brim trimmed down. It’s a nice touch.

Bill, I am positive a hissy fit is worse than a conniption fit. Why? Women are known for hissys. I think it comes from the word hysterical and it can be an incredible event. A conniption fit is minor in comparison. And Bob, thanks for giving me another good laugh.

What in the blazes are the Marfa lights? I’m a 6th generation Texian, but we are Coastal people and I don’t know the lore out west.

I can tell you about the light that’s said to appear down here on Bailey’s Prairie. It’s the ghost of old Brit Bailey. He shows up from time to time as an orange glowing ball that floats along at about a man’s head height. Along about 150 years ago or so, the ball was said to be about the size of a bushel basket, but it’s gotten smaller over the years. The latest sightings put it at about the size of a baseball. Brit Bailey is said to be out looking for the jug of whiskey he asked to be buried with him. The story goes that his wife said he’d done enough drinking in his lifetime and she was going to make darn sure he didn’t continue the behavior in his afterlife. Brit has been looking for his jug ever since.

I don’t understand my cat’s either, but somehow they always manage to get their way!

Gene, thanks for the tip about San Leon.

To any veterans of the D-Day landings (including those in the Navy who got the soldiers there) “Thank you to you and to all your buddies who are still over there. We remember.”

Ellen, Google “Marfa Lights” and you’ll get more answers to your question than you want to read. I’ve seen ‘em several times and I’ve always thought they were headlights of vehicles down on Highway 67. LH.

Jim, yeah, I remember more than the sound of a lino-type. Even among all the present high tech wonders, the lino-type is an extraordinary machine that can set words in metal and justify a line of type. – Don’t recall Bones Jones but I read a thousand pieces by Hal Boyle. LH.

Many years ago you wrote an article about Pete Locklin. My Mother and I are wondering if the Pete (your brother-in-law) that died in 1965 is the same person that you mentioned in your article today (6/7/07).

When I was young we lived next door to a Pete Locklin in George West, TX. This was about 1949.

I have been going thru things that I shouldn’t have kept so long, enjoying and remineesing, and wondering, with the garbage container close by. Haveing to get up rather often to empty it. Have enjoyed some of your articles, NEEDLEPLAY by Erica Wilson, and recipes and advice from Ann Criswell. It made me think of an article that you wrote about years ago about the CARBURATOR COOKBOOK…Wish I had a copy. I still check for it at HALF-PRICED Books. No luck. I’ve never done it, but often thought of seasoning a roast and adding my potatoes and carrots and onions, and wrapping it up real good in heavy duty foil before leaving for a family reunion or a long road trip. Wonder if there would be enough liquid in the package to make gravy in the mictowave when we arrived at the motel? LaNelle Phillips